The Pepper's ghost is a well known illusion dating back to the 1800's. The illusion involves the appearance of a three-dimensional object in a location where the object is not physically present. FIG. 1 is a diagram depicting the structure of a classic Pepper's ghost illusion. In this example, the structure involves transparent or at least partially transparent reflective surface 10, such as a sheet of glass or half-silvered mirror, positioned to reflect a three-dimensional object 12 to a viewer 14. The combination of the reflection from the actual object 12 to the viewer 14 causes the object 12 to appear to the viewer 14 as if it is floating in air behind the reflective surface 10 in the location of the ghost object 16. There have been various implementations of the Pepper's ghost illusion since its inception.
Anamorphosis is an image projection technique dating back to the 1400's involving the reconstitution of a distorted projection. FIG. 2 illustrates one example of anamorphosis involving a cylindrical mirror 20 used to view a flat anamorphically-distorted image 22 which, in this example, is a house. The image 22 is distorted in such a way that when viewed in the cylindrical mirror 20, the image 24 appears undistorted. The mirror is a conventional mirror, whether polished metal, glass with an aluminum, silver, or other metal deposition on one side, or the like. Mirrors used in conventional anamorphic imaging are highly reflective or totally reflective to visible light, reflecting all or substantially all visible light incident on the mirror.